


The Dark Busker.

by BarPurple



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentions of Death, Missed Chances, Moving On, Pain, Pre series first meeting, Sad, Sherlock Plays the Violin, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 17:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5425337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She deserved better than this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark Busker.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OhAine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhAine/gifts).



> This is the dark, angsty version of my fic The Busker. If you're looking for hopeful, happy fluff go read that one, if you're ready to have your heart ripped out, read on, but I did warn you.

The busker was there again. Violinists playing in the Underground weren’t unusual, but this one, this tall thin mop haired man was different. She’d see him on the way to work every day for the past six months, bowing familiar tunes and tipping his head in thanks as coins fell into the case laid open at his feet. He was good; he was great in fact, tourists and locals alike smiled at the melodies he played.

She didn’t care about his morning performances, but he was never far from her thoughts during the long hours at work. It was his late night playing she lived for. It was silly and romantic of her, but she felt there was something special; something just for her in those late night recitals.

The last tube rattled along the tracks and into the dark of the tunnels. She listened and heard the sweet strains of music drifting through the empty station. It was soft and gentle, filled with longing. It was the sort of music every little girl hoped would play in the background when she met her Prince Charming. In her mind it was so very much better to have the Prince playing the music, wringing out his heart on an instrument, laying himself bare in the universal language of love.

Tonight she was going to ask him. Tonight she was going to find out if he was playing just for her.

Instead of strolling by him, only slowing long enough to drop a quid in the open case, she stopped directly in front of the busker. He twitched and faltered in his bowing. Slowly the violin and bow were lowered to his sides and he looked at her with a curious tilt of his head. She wondered what colour his eyes were behind those cheap sunglasses. 

He swallowed and nervously cleared his throat and she realised she’d been silently staring for far too long. She offered him the untouched cup of hot chocolate she carried. This is the way it was supposed to go, a down at heel prince in disguise taking an offer of kindness from the woman who he would spend the rest of his life with. 

He appeared to eye it warily as he transferred his bow into the hand that already held his violin. He took it carefully in his dirty long fingered hand. Once the cup was safe in his grip she quickly asked;

“What’s it called?”

She didn’t have to explain, wasn’t sure she could have if she tried.

“It doesn’t have a name yet.”

This amount of conversation appeared to have exhausted him; he sagged a little more into the up turned collar his tatty army great coat as if trying to vanish from her view. She smiled and left him standing alone in the artificial light. She’d done it, she’d made the first move and now it would all come together just like a real fairy tale.

It didn’t work out like that. 

The violinist wasn’t there the next day, or the one after that. He never came back to that pitch on her tube station. For the first time in her life her belief in true love wavered.

Two months later the eerily familiar figure of world’s only consulting detective stormed into her life. Hope and cheerfulness and happiness found themselves under siege from the relentless put downs, snide comments and casual indifference thrown her way. The violinist and his beautiful music became a tarnished memory.

 

A year later it was that beautiful haunting melody that reached her and dragged her back to the waking world. There was more to the melody than she remembered; new phrases lifting and dipping, the lifts becoming less frequent and the lows more intense and deeper as the new sections developed.

Molly opened her eyes and saw a violinist. She suffered a momentary disorientation as her fuzzy mind insisted she was standing on the tube station watching the busker from so many years ago. Her senses provided more accurate information; the feel of hospital sheets beneath her; the sting of a cannula in the back of her hand and the smell of antiseptic and she accepted the fact she was in hospital and in hospital as a patient at that. She blinked and realised that the violinist was really in the room with her and she recognized what he was playing. She licked her dry lips and croaked out.

“What’s it called?”

Sherlock stopped playing and span around to face her. Bow and violin were deposited roughly on the uncomfortable armchair as he rushed to her bedside. She noted the tears shining wetly in his eyes and leaving damp trails on his face before the blackness of sleep pulled her under again.

“Molly!”

She spent another nine days in hospital and although violin music haunted her dreams, she never saw Sherlock playing again. He visited frequently, but always in the company of John, or Lestrade, or Mrs Hudson, even on one occasion with Mycroft. On the day she was released he stood by her side as she sat fully dressed on the edge of the bed, patiently waiting as John went over her medication with one of the nurses. 

Molly felt like she was standing at a crossroad, the possibility of a happy future one way and continued sadness the other. It was time to decide. She whipped out her hand and grasped Sherlock’s wrist tightly.

“John, could you do that outside please? I need a moment with Sherlock.”

A strange look skimmed across John’s features, before he nodded curtly and ushered the confused nurse from the room, firmly closing the door behind him. Molly took a deep breath and before Sherlock could utter a syllable she asked for confirmation of an idea that she’d had the moment Sherlock Holmes strutted into her morgue;

“I have to know Sherlock, were you the busker?”

Sherlock’s gaze was transfixed by her fingers wrapped around his wrist. Molly let go quickly. Sherlock blinked and gave her a curious look as he nodded in reply to her question. Her suspicion was correct; this arrogant, heartless man was the busker who had made her feel so loved with his beautiful music. For a brief second Molly caught a fleeting glimpse of the busker in Sherlock’s stance. It didn’t seem fair that the wonderful, shy musician was the same man who’d put her in near fatal danger. She’d fallen in love with an act, nothing more.

“That piece you were playing when I first woke up, who wrote it?”

“I did. Still am.”

The moment was rushing ever closer. There was one more question she wanted an answer too.

“I asked you once back then what it was called and you said it didn’t have a name. Does it have one now?”

Sherlock closed his eyes and she could see his throat work as he swallowed. His eyes still shut he nodded.

“Is it called Molly?”

A tear slipped from under his closed eyelid as he nodded again. She felt her heart hardened at his attempt to manipulating her feelings with false emotion. It had to be false emotion, the man she’d come to know over the past year was incapable of anything else. Her decision was practically made for her. 

“It needs to end. That music once meant true love to me. When you started using St Barts I had a feeling you might be the busker. I thought maybe you were awkward and shy, just waiting for the right moment to reveal your true feelings. I had this foolish dream that we’d have a lovely story to tell our grandkids when they asked how we met, but I can’t do this, not with you. I can’t love a man who is willing to use me as bait to catch a criminal. Being with you would be the death of me and I don’t deserve that any more than I deserve your criticism or manipulation.”

She got to her feet, wincing a little at the pain that still lingered in her back, and collected her bag. At the door she turned and gave on last look at the man standing motionless where she had left him. His eyes were still closed, but there were no more tears rolling down his face. 

“Goodbye Sherlock.”

Molly Hooper left the room. A few moments later Sherlock Holmes walked out into the corridor, his Belstaff wrapped tightly about his lanky frame as he strode passed a confused John Watson.

The truth of that matter is that Sherlock never really left. Part of his psyche remained in the mental copy of that hospital room. Over time that room became a prison cell in his mind palace; the cell where his heart was tortured into madness by the lost possibilities of what could have been.

 

_Three years later._

Molly was gathering her papers together at the end of the lecture. The pathology conference in Edinburgh was the first public speech she’d given since she’d left St Barts three years ago and she was relieved it had gone so well.

“Molly? Molly Hooper!”

She turned at the sound of a voice from her past and came face to face with John Watson. She greeted him with a smile.

“Hello John. It’s Molly Talbot these days.”

He gave the event programme in his hand a small wave.

“Sorry, old habits. You got time for a coffee?”

They walked to the nearest Costas chatting about the conference, Molly’s husband Tom, John's finance Mary, but a spectre was looming unspoken between them. Molly bit the bullet and asked carefully;

“How’s Sherlock?”

A strange sad look crossed John’s face.

“You’ve not heard? Oh Molly, I'm sorry. He’s dead.”

Molly listened in stunned silence as John told her of the spate of bombings that had held London in fear two years ago. She’d been in America at the time, still avoiding everything to do with her old home. Sherlock had solved the case and, from what Mycroft and Lestrade could piece together afterwards, he’d caught up with the bomber at a swimming pool of all places. He'd gone alone of course. John explained how there’d been an explosion at the pool. Mycroft has insisted that Sherlock be listed as missing, since his body wasn’t found. John gave her a sad look and a shrug that clearly said he thought Mycroft was fooling himself.

“Nobody could have survived that, the whole building was levelled. You okay Molly?”

She blinked, surprised to find her eyes were dry.

“Yeah, it’s just so…what a waste of a life.”

“Yeah. Well we both know how reckless he could be.”

And that was that. They chatted a little more about unimportant things and then, with insincere promises to keep in touch, they went their separate ways. 

As Molly walked along South Bridge her phone rang, the caller ID showing Tom’s smiling face. Talking happily with her husband she failed to notice the busker standing on the corner of High Street. As she passed by the tall, thin man tucked his violin under his chin and began to play. Wrapped up in her conversation with Tom, Molly wasn’t sure why she shivered and quickened her pace, but that night for the first time in many years violin music haunted her nightmares.


End file.
